Communication and Gender

Definitional

To begin studying gender communication one must first understand the major differences between sex and gender. Sex is your biological makeup when you are born whether it be male or female. Sex is stable, unless you get a sex change but you still technically remain the same sex that you are born with. Sex is also seen to influence many laws or policies and it has the ability to normalize intimate interactions between people. Gender on the other hand, is socially constructed and learned over time. Gender defines whether you are a "boy" or "girl" according to society. Gender defines whether you act feminine or masculine and it is based on our norms that are put in place by society such as the influence of the media. We study gender communication to see how it evolves over time as well as see the positive and negative influences that the our norms put in place by society have on gender communication and discrimination. The overall scope of gender communication encompasses a system of social meaning that we have constructed to understand gender communication as an organized way to study how gender communication affects our daily encounters. Gender communication also affects our personal identity because it alters our own perception on how we see ourselves. According to Lugones & Spelman (1983) their are 3 actual reasons that we student gender communication: to see how parts of one's life fit together, to locate oneself concretely in the world and lastly to enable one to think about the extent to which one is responsible for being in a particular situation at a given time. Gender communication studies have further gone into detail to notice the changes of the norms such as how women were once seen as being the ones who would stay at home and cook & care for their family, now a days our norms have changed so women are seen as being able to stay at home or go out and work in just about every field of work that men are able to. These different types of actions we associate with male or female are called social roles- "a set of behavior patters that define the expected behavior for individuals in a given position or status" ( Stewart 23). Studying all the specifics of gender communication makes it easier to notice the differences between male and female communication behavior but much more importantly by studying gender communication we are able to provide more accurate descriptions of human interaction as a whole rather than the effects of just male and female communication (Stewart 34).

Application

This clip of That 70s Show that I have chose to use for my gender communication application is a great example of a friendly interaction between friends (male & female) as well as how the different sexes discuss the same exact topic in a very different way because of their gender. Technically speaking because they are discussing the same topic there is no reason as to why the two sets of friends would be able to have the discussion in the same manner. The pair of females that are located in the top portion of the video are obviously friends who are discussing the relationship of one of the males located in the lower portion of the video. I found it interesting how the actual choice of words in the conversation are so different, the males are using what society could see as "bro" language or language that two guys having a conversation about girls would use without girls around. It is likely that if the girls were present in the same room they would use different word choices as well as perhaps try to present themselves in a different manner. The girls are using their equivalent to "bro" talk which appears to be a much more gossipy form of conversation that once again would be a completely different conversation than if the guys they were talking about were there in the room. This conversation is a great example of the findings of Jacklin and Maccoby (1978) in which they discovered that there are two categories that gender differences exist: verbal versus the visual-spacial as well as aggression. The aggression seems to be more present in the guys conversation because thats normally a "guy" thing to do in conversation which is very different that the girls more "gossipy or ladylike" conversation. It is interesting to study various applications of gender communication over time because it does change greatly, for example it is unlikely that this clip of a modern day TV show could be seen on a TV show that aired in the 1940s because the norms established by society were much different than those that exist today.

Personal

For my personal application of gender communication I chose to focus on the effects that gender communication and discrimination have played a role in my life. Because I am heavily involved with the arts I have noticed the stereotypes that society has placed as the norms for what males involved with the arts should be like. For example for the past few years I have been involved with theatre and it is a common stereotype that males who do theatre are homosexuals. It is not uncommon that many of the males who are involved with theatre so happen to be gay but because many of them are it becomes the norm for society to portray that everyone who does theater must be gay just because thats what society sees. Furthermore because the population of artistic males is so much less than that of males involved with business or scientific fields, society seems to associate a stereotype with artistic males. Society seems to see them as "less grounded" due to the nature of their work. This is most likely associated with the nature of their work being much more abstract that that of a male who is found working in the business work field. The study of gender communication helps to understand why these stereotypes are put into place and how these societal norms will change and evolve over time.